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Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers
Using Authentic Video in the Language Classroom
Using film and video in the classroom is motivating and fun but can be daunting for the teacher. This book guides and supports teachers with plenty of practical suggestions for activities which can be used with drama, soap opera, comedy, sports programmes and documentaries. Many of the activities will lend themselves for use with DVD and webcasts.
288 pages, Paperback
First published April 14, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 18, 2013
By far the best of the teacher's 'cookbooks' I have read, not limited to recipes for individual dishes, this also provides menu plans for whole meals and even a series of meals - joined up teaching! It is also the most linguistically informed I have read, we go beyond "this tastes good" to "this is highly nutritious because...".
This is achieved by the unusually extensive introduction, 120 pages of methodology which provide an extensive discussion of the underlying value of video as a teaching medium and how different genres of video can be used to teach different genres of language.
However, the very high standard of this cookbook highlights the limitations of the cookbook format for teacher education. Namely the lack of any research citations or even a bibliography to support the claims made by this book. For example, "...the fascinating fact is that the mistaken pronunciations students generate by reading are often not over-ridden by the heard form, however often it is heard" (pg 53). This highlights a problem that I have heard in my classroom, but I'm not sure I would agree with "however often it is heard" and I would like to know how general this claim is meant to be. In short, I would like to read the research myself, presuming this claim is the result of research and not simply a unsupported claim the author is making. But without a citation I don't know where to begin to look.
A more subtle criticism - and again I don't want to be hard on this book, it really is the best of its kind I've read - is that many of the 150 pages of activities that follow the introduction do not obviously follow from the rationale given for using video in the first place. The author remarks that "Only [video] can provide this range of [interactive] language, and students need such exposure because to learn to speak to people they must see and hear people speaking to each other." (pg 14) Interaction is one of the two most powerful reasons for using video. But some of the activities - for example, 'Interview' (pg 180), writing an article based on a television interview, could equally be based on reading a magazine interview or listening to a radio interview. Conversely, activities like 'Best image' (pg 130) could be realised by using still photographs rather than film. Given the preparation required for teachers to access and use video in the classroom, I would have thought every activity suggested here should maximally exploit the medium.
The other powerful reason for using video is context, and how we use it to inform our understanding of language. "Expert speakers make use of the language to understand the action; learners frequently have to understand the action to understand the language" (pg 13). Some activities present the video with sound off and then sound on to facilitate the approach a learner might take. But there is little discussion of how the teacher (an expert speaker) can approach the medium in the way a learner might, and think about how sight can be used to discover language.
This is achieved by the unusually extensive introduction, 120 pages of methodology which provide an extensive discussion of the underlying value of video as a teaching medium and how different genres of video can be used to teach different genres of language.
However, the very high standard of this cookbook highlights the limitations of the cookbook format for teacher education. Namely the lack of any research citations or even a bibliography to support the claims made by this book. For example, "...the fascinating fact is that the mistaken pronunciations students generate by reading are often not over-ridden by the heard form, however often it is heard" (pg 53). This highlights a problem that I have heard in my classroom, but I'm not sure I would agree with "however often it is heard" and I would like to know how general this claim is meant to be. In short, I would like to read the research myself, presuming this claim is the result of research and not simply a unsupported claim the author is making. But without a citation I don't know where to begin to look.
A more subtle criticism - and again I don't want to be hard on this book, it really is the best of its kind I've read - is that many of the 150 pages of activities that follow the introduction do not obviously follow from the rationale given for using video in the first place. The author remarks that "Only [video] can provide this range of [interactive] language, and students need such exposure because to learn to speak to people they must see and hear people speaking to each other." (pg 14) Interaction is one of the two most powerful reasons for using video. But some of the activities - for example, 'Interview' (pg 180), writing an article based on a television interview, could equally be based on reading a magazine interview or listening to a radio interview. Conversely, activities like 'Best image' (pg 130) could be realised by using still photographs rather than film. Given the preparation required for teachers to access and use video in the classroom, I would have thought every activity suggested here should maximally exploit the medium.
The other powerful reason for using video is context, and how we use it to inform our understanding of language. "Expert speakers make use of the language to understand the action; learners frequently have to understand the action to understand the language" (pg 13). Some activities present the video with sound off and then sound on to facilitate the approach a learner might take. But there is little discussion of how the teacher (an expert speaker) can approach the medium in the way a learner might, and think about how sight can be used to discover language.
February 26, 2015
Very thorough book, lots of great ideas, but as a caveat you need to choose the authentic video and develop the lesson appropriate for your specific students. I would like to own it as a resource.
August 18, 2015
i needed read for help me guided writing a research paper
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June 21, 2013428.0071 S5533 2003
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews